Leverage by Joshua C. Cohen

I honestly felt completely blind sighted by this book. I mean I thought oh a prank war of football players and gymnasts and there are steroids so that should be interesting. THIS WAS NOT ABOUT STEROIDS!!! Well it was an underlying problem but I felt like the author just passed by it. One of the main characters, Kurt, took pills from his coach but then that was it... until nonchalantly two weeks later he just casually mentions that he is getting bigger because of the D-Bol (Steroids). It's weird that I know the name for steroids with reading Gym Candy and now this book. Gym Candy actually mentioning more. I understand that it can be used to say why the three football players were acting crazy but really it annoyed me that the author just waved it off. It's not cool to just use steroids. Kurt better be stopping! Other than that it was an amazingly powerful read that just.... wow.

Well I passed the summary... so what it's about: Kurt Brodsky is a new football player for the Knights. He's a Fullback which I've never heard of and I asked some guys and they didn't know (I know now that I definitely asked the wrong guys). It means he's a power blocker and runner for the other Fullback and the Quarterback (according to Wikipedia). Anyways he has had to take a lot of abuse. You can tell by just looking at him since he has a massive scar from the outside corner of his eye to his jaw as well as patchy skin that is confirmed later to be a burn mark. He's lived in foster homes and was accused of killing his best friend Lamar when it was actually the caretaker that did it. I'm still not sure if he did other things.... My first reaction to Kurt was that he sounded hot. A muscly guy who stutters. Super cute. I'm a girl. I get to react that way. I know this is a book geared more towards boys so they probably have a different first reaction more like Danny's reaction which is the second main character. Probably won't have the reaction to keep away from him because he'll probably end up going crazy and killing a bunch of people because he's a fictional character... it's probably more excitement because you know this guy will do some damage.

Danny is a gymnast. I don't know how the football players think that gymnasts are weaker than them. Have you seen their arms!? And what they can do!? Well Danny gets in trouble with the football players because he's in the gymnast group and is blamed for the pranks they have been pulling. I'm still angry at Danny for what he didn't do. I would have probably been freaking out too. But I would have yelled or something or maybe I would have been worried that I would get raped too... Yes. Rape. This has sexual abuse. I told you I was blind sighted. The whole scene was really messed up. I can't believe I got through that. The author has tortured me with that in my mind. Disgusting.....  So then you know don't read this if you think you can't handle it. Seriously. It has rape. It's really messed up what happens. Think about it.

I still actually really loved this book. It went in a completely different direction than I thought it would but it definitely caught my attention. Crazy, powerful read. The ending was perfect. I noticed really late but the book's title has the word rage on it and it's red. I felt so stupid I didn't figure that out before. Awesome Cover by the way... So I'm off to find me some more YA Sports reads!